Joyce Manor - Joyce Manor

Joyce Manor's first full-length is a curt 10 tracks that hardly even eclipses the 20-minute mark, but it's only part of their atypical approach to everything. Merely labeling the band "pop-punk" also does a great disservice to the scrappy and slightly "off" quality to this bustling, scrappy self-titled debut. However you spin it, though, Joyce Manor is a sprightly, enjoyable record that culls the sing-along camaraderie of the Menzingers, the grainy looseness of Screeching Weasel and the jangly brevity of Guided By Voices. There's a humming atmosphere that invades "Call Out (Laundry)" when the band slow things down, and a power-pop brashness to cuts like the gentle indictment of "Derailed" and the scratchier "Leather Jacket." Joyce Manor is carried both by a sense of raw, melodic fierceness and an incredibly deliberate experimental tilt, which despite its occasional hastiness, allows the album to succeed.